On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

Friday, December 31, 1982

Comments: In 1982, the Mythopoeic Awards went right back to their usual practice of recognizing that half of the human race is made up of women, resulting in more than half of the nominees on the ballot being works that were authored by women. By the early-1980s this wasn't so unusual, as many other genre awards had at last begun to include female nominees in their ballots. But what is unusual is that, while those awards were having to adjust to the influx of women-authored works in their nominee lists, for the Mythopoeic Awards, this was just business as usual.

Other Nominees:The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene WolfeDelusion's Master by Tanith LeeThe Many-Colored Land by Julian MayThe Sable Moon by Nancy SpringerThe Woman Who Loved the Moon and Other Stories by Elizabeth A. Lynn

Comments: One function of perusing award lists is that you get a sense for how prolific some authors are. In 1982, for example, C.J. Cherryh had a short story, novelette, novella, and three novels make the Locus Award short list. I don't know for certain, but it seems likely to me that she didn't sleep all year. And she wasn't alone. Tanith Lee had two novels nominated. Martin had a novel, a collection, and two short stories nominated and won in the novelette category. Silverberg had a novella and three novelettes nominated. And so on. Granted, the Locus Awards are something of a popularity contest, so seeing the same widely popular authors nominated multiple times is not some that should be regarded as unusual. But the point is that the first step in getting on the ballot is writing the works, and these authors managed to turn out reams of publishable material. To win you have to get nominated. To get nominated, you have to publish. And to publish, you have to write. And it helps if you write a lot.

Other Nominees:
2. At the Eye of the Ocean by Hilbert Schenck
3. Radix by A.A. Attanasio
4. The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O. Williams
5. War Games by Karl Hansen
6. The Prince of Morning Bells by Nancy Kress
7. Revolution from Rosinante by Alexis Gilliland
8. A Storm Upon Ulster by Kenneth Flint
9. Under the City of Angels by Jerry Earl Brown
10. Slow Fall to Dawn by Stephen Leigh
11. Tintagel by Paul H. Cook
12. Lanark by Alasdair Gray
13. Pilgrimage by Drew Mendelson
14. Daystar and Shadow by James B. Johnson
15. (tie) The Former King by Adam Corby
(tie) The Tularemia Gambit by Steve Perry

3. In the Western Tradition by Phyllis Eisenstein
4. The Desert of Stolen Dreams by Robert Silverberg
5. With Delicate Mad Hands by James Tiptree, Jr.
6. Polyphemus by Michael Shea
7. Ealdwood by C.J. Cherryh
8. True Names by Vernor Vinge
9. The Winter Beach by Kate Wilhelm
10. With Thimbles, With Forks and Hope by Kate Wilhelm
11. Swarmer, Skimmer by Gregory Benford
12. Emergence by David R. Palmer
13. The Venetian Court by Charles L. Harness
14. Amnesia by Jack Dann
15. The Loom of Thessaly by David Brin
16. Petals of Rose by Marc Stiegler
17. Which Way to the Ends of Time? by Michael McCollum
18. Through All Your Houses Wandering by Ted Reynolds

Other Nominees:
2. Unicorn Variation by Roger Zelazny
3. The Thermals of August by Edward Bryant
4. The Haunted Tower by C.J. Cherryh
5. Out of the Everywhere by James Tiptree, Jr.
6. The Fire When It Comes by Parke Godwin
7. Murder on Lupozny Station by Michael Bishop and Gerald W. Page
8. Elric at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock
9. Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo by James Tiptree, Jr.
10. The Quickening by Michael Bishop
11. The Giftie Gie Us by Timothy Zahn
12. A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa by Robert Silverberg
13. Mummer Kiss by Michael Swanwick
14. Vox Olympica by Michael Bishop
15. The Summer's Dust by Pamela Sargent
16. H-Tec by Charles L. Harness
17. Stuff of Dreams by Lewis Shiner
18. These Stones Will Remember by Reginald Bretnor
19. Waiting for the Earthquake by Robert Silverberg
20. Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson
21. Walden Three by Michael Swanwick
22. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
23. Going Under by Jack Dann
24. Blind Spot by Jayge Carr
25. Shadows on the Cave Wall by Nancy Kress
26. Blue Apes by Phyllis Gotlieb
27. Werewind by J. Michael Reaves
28. A Thief in Ni-Moya by Robert Silverberg

3. The Needle Men by George R.R. Martin
4. The Only Death in the City by C.J. Cherryh
5. Remembering Melody by George R.R. Martin
6. The Woman the Unicorn Loved by Gene Wolfe
7. Exposures by Gregory Benford
8. The Quiet by George Florance-Guthridge
9. The Palace at Midnight by Robert Silverberg
10. Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile by Somtow Sucharitkul
11. Executive Clemency by Gardner Dozois and Jack C. Haldeman II
12. The Regulars by Robert Silverberg
13. Walk the Ice by Mildred Downey Broxon
14. Forever by Damon Knight
15. The Shroud by Michael McCollum
15. Disciples by Gardner Dozois
16. Venice Drowned by Kim Stanley Robinson
17. Second Comings — Reasonable Rates by Pat Cadigan
18. The Softest Hammer by Charles Sheffield
19. The Grown-Up by Thomas M. Disch
20. Hinterlands by William Gibson
21. The Coming of the Doll by Pat Cadigan
22. Mud/Aurora by D.D. Storm
23. The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson
24. The Bone Flute by Lisa Tuttle
25. Casey's Empire by Nancy Kress
26. Altamira by Carter Scholz
27. On the Slab by Harlan Ellison

Other Nominees:
2. Gene Wolfe's Book of Days by Gene Wolfe
3. Sunfall by C.J. Cherryh
4. Particle Theory by Edward Bryant
5. Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett
6. Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions by James Tiptree, Jr.
7. Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories by Orson Scott Card
8. Paratime by H. Beam Piper
9. The Woman Who Loved the Moon and Other Stories by Elizabeth A. Lynn
10. Listen, Listen by Kate Wilhelm
11. Distant Stars by Samuel R. Delany
12. Winners by Poul Anderson
13. The Best of John Sladek by John Sladek
14. Father to the Stars by Philip José Farmer
15. Hidden Variables by Charles Sheffield
16. Far from Home by Walter S. Tevis
17. A Life in the Day of . . . and Other Short Stories by Frank M. Robinson
18. Time Travelers Strictly Cash by Spider Robinson
19. Federation by H. Beam Piper
20. A Glow of Candles and Other Stories by Charles L. Grant

Other Nominees:
2. Universe 11 edited by Terry Carr
3. The Best Science Fiction of the Year #10 edited by Terry Carr
4. New Voices 4 edited by George R.R. Martin
5. Flashing Swords #5: Demons and Daggers edited by Lin Carter
6. New Dimensions 12 edited by Marta Randall and Robert Silverberg

Comments: In 1982, the Best Novella category was added to the World Fantasy Awards. The only surprising thing about the addition of this category is that it took so long for it to become part of the World Fantasy Awards. Both the Hugos and the Nebulas - which the World Fantasy Award was specifically created to be a fantasy counterpart to - had been honoring the Best Novella of the year for several years by this point. Markets like Fantasy & Science Fiction had been publishing fantasy novellas for quite some time as well, so there was no shortage of potential nominees. But for mostly inexplicable reasons, the World Fantasy Awards didn't get around to recognizing novella length work as its own category until nearly a decade after the awards were created.

Monday, September 6, 1982

Comments: The 1982 Hugo ballot for Best Dramatic Presentation is the first slate in that category that I can say that I saw all of in the movie theater when they were initially released. And looking at the list, on which the western in space Outland was probably the weakest member, one can only marvel at how great a year this had been for genre fans. The victory by Raiders of the Lost Ark was probably inevitable given that film's box office popularity, but given that Raiders really only has one fantasy element that crops up at the very close of the movie, I would have preferred something more clearly rooted in the science fiction or fantasy genre to have taken home the trophy, and all the other nominees were clearly genre fiction. I have a soft spot for the surreal Time Bandits, but that may be just an idiosyncrasy of mine.

In the more traditional categories, C.J. Cherryh took home the prize for Best Novel for her book Downbelow Station, but her victory highlights a somewhat odd trend: a woman winning against a slate of other nominees who are all men. When one looks at the list of nominees across the categories, there are only a handful of women among them, which is a pattern that wasn't really new. A handful of women got on the Hugo ballots of this era, and seem to have had disproportionate success at winning awards. The only explanation that I can come up with is that while publishers and editors were willing to consider work by women, they would only let the best female writers through the gates, whereas mediocre male writers could much more easily get their work through the hoops necessary to get to the market.

Comments: After lying dormant for three years, the Prometheus Awards returned in 1982, revived by the newly formed Libertarian Futurist Society which seems to have been created mostly to hand out this award on an annual basis. It may seem odd to some that I read the novels nominated for this award, since for the most part I consider libertarian political and economic thinking to be juvenile at best, and downright loathsome at times. However, because the actual instances of "libertarian" science fiction are so rare, the Libertarian Futurist Society has to stretch the definition of "libertarian science fiction" so broadly that many good writers whose works are vaguely, kind of, if you squint your eyes and wish real hard libertarian are nominated. And that fact makes reading the books that appear on the finalist lists for this award worthwhile.

Saturday, July 10, 1982

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: Once again, the Campbell Awards did something strange. Not the fact that Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker won the award, even though it is a very quirky book. No, the strangeness for 1982 was that, breaking with previous practice, neither the second or third place novels, or any of the other non-winning books were identified in the results. I suppose at this point it should not really be a surprise that the Campbell Awards made a seemingly inexplicable change.

However, there is almost no way to quibble with the winning novel Riddley Walker, which is simply a brilliant piece of post-apocalyptic fiction. It is a difficult novel to read, because of the very odd language used by the author, but without the altered language - a kind of debased pidgin English - then the novel simply would not work as well.

Saturday, April 24, 1982

Comments: For the second year in a row the Nebula Awards had controversy. While the controversy in 1981 was merely the result of an ineligible entry making the final ballot before being removed from consideration, in 1982 Lisa Tuttle removed her own story from the ballot and refused the award due to what she believed was unseemly behavior from one of her fellow nominees. George Florance-Guthridge sent a copy of his nominated story The Quiet to all SFWA members along with an endorsement from Fantasy & Science Fiction, the magazine that published it. Although this seems to have become common practice in more recent years, at the time it was considered somewhat gauche, and Tuttle objected on the grounds that it was inappropriate.

Tuttle requested that her story be withdrawn from consideration for the award as a protest against Florance-Guthridge's campaigning, but by the time she informed the SFWA, her story had already been voted the winner of the Nebula. Tuttle declined the award, stating that she had already withdrawn her story from consideration, asking that her reasons be explained when the award was to be presented, but her publisher accepted the award on her behalf at the ceremony with no mention of her protest. As a result of the fracas, Florance-Guthridge stopped writing for years, and stopped writing science fiction altogether. While I respect that Tuttle felt she had to make a stand, I can only mourn the loss of the fiction that might have been.

Other Nominees:The Fire When It Comes by Parke GodwinLirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo by James Tiptree, Jr.Mummer Kiss by Michael SwanwickSea Changeling by Mildred Downey BroxonThe Thermals of August by Edward Bryant

Other Nominees:Disciples by Gardner DozoisGoing Under by Jack DannJohnny Mnemonic by William GibsonThe Pusher by John VarleyThe Quiet by George Florance-GuthridgeVenice Drowned by Kim Stanley RobinsonZeke by Timothy R. Sullivan

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